How has IBM impacted Computer Storage today and moving forward? IBM invented the hard disk drive (HDD) and brought it to market in 1956, the HDD which were considered secondary storage devices at that time. As technology advanced HDD were the primary data storage devices in the ’60’s. The first IBM drive, the 350 RAMAC , was approximately the size of two refrigerators and stored 5 million 6-bit characters (the equivalent of 3.75... [Continue Reading]

Hello faithful followers, I will be posting items from IBMEDGE 2013 this week how I will be doing it just from the IBM ATS Blog. Check out my posts here https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/accelerate/?lang=en and don't forget to following my more frequent posts on Twitter: twitter.com/kthuerk

Hello faithful followers, I will be posting items from IBMEDGE 2013 this week how I will be doing it just from the IBM ATS Blog. Check out my posts here https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/accelerate/?lang=en and don't forget to following my more frequent posts on Twitter: twitter.com/kthuerk

On Feb 5th IBM announced more SmarterPlanet enhancements, and from a storage perspective announced a lot of different options. One example was the new Real-time Compression Appliance™ Model STN7800. The new STN7800 appliance provides compression for large complex environments with improved performance, user transparent operation and new unlimited capacity licensing. As we established last week in my Compression Blog the main enterprise benefit... [Continue Reading]

Think back, how has IT evolved over your career and over back over the past 30 years if applicable. Now narrow down that focus to just Data Management techniques. Its easy to forget that enterprises used to go to great lengths to determine what data had value and which did not; this was a very expensive approach to data management. Now fast forward to the present and you can see that the IT pendulum has swung the other direction and today... [Continue Reading]

Just a quick follow-up to my April 11 '12 Blog @ the launch of IBM PureSystems it can be found here: (https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/DataCenter7/entry/ibm_puresystems13?lang=en) I thought I would share some success about how well the IBM PureSystems offerings are doing in the market. The current portfolio for PureSystems offerings comes in three flavors: PureFlex PureApp PureData IBM has been very success... [Continue Reading]

In the past few years, as IT continued to advance at breakneck speeds, rotational disk speeds have remained static with 7200RPM, 10K &15K drive offerings. Disk subsystems have adapted to overcome these speed limitations by deploying such tactics as, adding more drives (large disk pools) or moving data to faster drive sets (Tiering). Using the available tools and modifying the enterprise storage environment grew in complexity and scale. I.E.... [Continue Reading]

OpenStack What is it and how it will benefit your enterprise? It is a cloud computing project founded in 2010 by Rackspace and NASA which enables Infrastructure as a service (IAAS) (comparable to Amazon EC2) OpenStack has Multiple projects & utilizes Apache Licenses. Since, it's inception more than 190 companies have joined the project including: Intel, NetApp, Citrix, Dell, AMD, Canonical, HP, Cisco, Red Hat, AT&T and IBM. IBM recently... [Continue Reading]

What does it take to run a midsize business from an IT perspective today? You are dealing w/ growth while budgets shrink. Mid-sized enterprises need advanced capabilities at an affordable price that are easy to implement Join the Smarter Storage for Midsize Businesses webcast to learn more https://engage.vevent.com/index.jsp?seid=43762&eid=556 The world is changing. Is your infrastructure ready? Take time to register and attend the Smarter... [Continue Reading]

The next era of Smarter Computing starts today! The world is changing. Is your infrastructure ready? Today IBM has released several new Enterprise Systems, here is a detailed peak into the storage associated systems. New IBM System Storage DS8870 The DS8870 with upgraded IBM POWER7 controllers and up to 1TB usable system cache brings about 3x performance over the already super fast DS8800. Each controller processor can scale up to 16 cores.... [Continue Reading]

Enterprise deduplication needs no introduction, it is one of the first enterprise data efficiencies offered on a grand scale from a storage performance perspective. Many vendors offer products that perform deduplication. Various methods are used for deduplicating data. Three methods frequently used are: Hash based Content aware HyperFactor® The cornerstone of ProtecTIER is HyperFactor, the IBM technology that deduplicates data inline as it is... [Continue Reading]

A well known fact is that Big Data brings lots of challenges, one of which is efficiency. As enterprise storage rates grow 20-60% per annum and with information doubling every 18-24 months enterprises need help without a lot of complexity to address the problems of Big Data. IBM is directly addressing the efficiency challenge by bringing compression to active data sets for Block Storage. Yes, the same Random Access Compression Engine (RACE)... [Continue Reading]

I will be posting a ton of data on the IBM Accelerate ATS Blog this week while at IBMEdge. Please visit that BLOG for info and updates on the premier Storage Conference. https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/accelerate/entry/welcome_to_ibmedge_2012_a_sold_out_venue6?lang=en

Today (04/11/12) IBM announced a way to change the economics of IT by radically simplifying enterprise computing. By unveiling PureSystems, the ground breaking family of expert integrated systems. The first two members of the family, PureFlex Systems and PureApplication Systems, mark an important step forward in how clients will think about, and interact with, their IT environments in the future. These systems will enable clients to avoid... [Continue Reading]

What: IBM is expanding their previous Storage conferences into one event, which is now called IBM Edge2012. Edge is designed to share all of IBM’s unique expertise, expert speakers, research and industry best practices with customers and Business Partners. The new IBM Edge2012 will be June 4-8 in Orlando , FL. IBM System Storage Technical University at IBM Edge2012 (known as Technical Edge) will provide 4.5 days of world-class training with more... [Continue Reading]

Did you know that IBM's Organic Disk Subsystem Growth is exploding? Here are just a few examples: IBM has shipped over 5,200 XIV Storage Systems and 384 petabytes of capacity since it acquired XIV in 2008. #ibmstorage IBM has shipped over 7000 Storwize V7000 Subsystems since it went GA in Oct '10. Not a bad way to increase market depth and breadth. Thoughts?

IBM has shipped 1000 Storwize V7000 units since the Oct announcement. Talk about a fast start. Don't take my word for it check it out. http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/business/ibm-shipped-1000-storwize-v7000

There seems to be a perception in the storage arena that IT Security is for all facets other than storage. However, if you have been monitoring the SAN product announcements in the storage space (which I know you are) you have seen the end-to-end security offerings in the SAN are now available. Sure there are several ways to accomplish security in the Storage Arena (Disk Subsystem based, SAN Based, Host based). Ever wonder what is going on... [Continue Reading]

ESG (Enterprise Server Group) released a great benchmark on the IBM Storwize V7000. The ESG benchmark was for mixed workloads. Please review the ESG benchmark data here: http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/02/ibm-storwize-v7000-real-world-mixed-workload-performance-in-vmware-environments/

How are you handling the unstructured data growth? One option is via Global Name space (GNS) (Please don’t confuse that with the old Novell IPX GNS ((Get Nearest Server)) yes acronym reuse is fun.) What is GNS? Put in simple terms it will do to file storage what DNS did for IP networking. Or put another way GNS enables your clients to access files w/ out knowing the exact location Or put yet another way it’s federation of a File System (F/S).... [Continue Reading]

Enterprise Data protection is not a new topic (it’s actually a core IT principal = protecting data) and we continue to see a growing investment in data protection methodologies in enterprises across the globe. While some of our competition want you to believe that all data needs can be satisfied by placing all data on spinning disk; doesn’t seem very economical to me. Tape is the greenest IT offering to date across the market. We... [Continue Reading]

We have kicked around the term Easy Tier for a few weeks now and thought it was time to dissect the technology in detail. What is IBM Easy Tier? It is an easy tool (setup in 15-30 minutes) that was designed to optimize data placement in a hybrid extent pool (Mix of SSD & HDD). Understand that it is a 2-tier architecture for data (hot & cold data sets) and that all candidate data is reviewed at the extent level (sub-volume... [Continue Reading]

The IBM Storage Management Pack for Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is now available! This plugin enables customers to monitor and report the health state of their IBM storage products, using their native operations management tool and processes. The plugin operates with IBM DS8000, Storwize V7000, SVC, and XIV systems. The plugin and documentation are available now via http://tinyurl.com/IBM-SCOM-Storage

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has launched a revision of the Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) The CSA CCM provides control frameworks which provide detailed understanding of security concepts and principles that are aligned to the Cloud Security Alliance guidance in 13 domains. Get your copy here --> http://tinyurl.com/y9jtkfw

We talked a few weeks back about Cloud Management / tools. On April 12, 2010 SNIA formerly released V1.0 of CDMI (Cloud Data Management Interface) ((Can be found here http://tinyurl.com/2ukfo5t)) Which allows Enterprises to manage (create, change & delete) Meta Data placed into clouds. SNIA recently released a draft for CDMI v1.0.1f http://preview.tinyurl.com/yavxjj2 Looks like the standards are shaping up well for Cloud Management.... [Continue Reading]

The IBM Storage Tier Advisor Tool predicts whether the addition of Solid State Drive (SSD) capacity in conjunction with the Easy Tier function could benefit system performance. The IBM Storage Tier Advisor Tool is a Windows console application that analyzes heat data files produced by Easy Tier and produces a graphical display of the amount of "hot" data per volume and predictions of how additional Solid State Drive... [Continue Reading]

IEEE Forms 100G Backplane and Twinax Cabling Study Group IEEE 802.3 Working Group has formed a 100Gbps Ethernet Electrical Backplane and Twinax Copper Cable Assemblies Study Group. Supporters of the initiative see a need to develop an electrical solution for 100GbE backplanes and short reach twinax cabling that operates at greater than 10Gbps per lane. The study group will have its first meeting as part of the IEEE 802.3 Working Group... [Continue Reading]

IBM Systems Director Storage Control a plug-in for IBM Systems Director was announced on Nov 7th, 2010. IBM Systems Director Storage Control has been designed & optimized for mid-range storage offerings to increase IT productivity, typically these tool sets are lacking in mid-range space. The Director plug-in provides support for DS3/4/5/6/8K disk subsystems, as well as Storage virtualization engines Storwize V7000, SVC, to... [Continue Reading]

IBM announced significant advances in its path to integrate electrical and optical devices on the same piece of silicon. The new CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics, which is the result of a decade of development at IBM's global Research laboratories, promises over 10X improvement in integration density than is feasible with current manufacturing techniques. IBM said it anticipates that Silicon Nanophotonics will dramatically increase the... [Continue Reading]

Ever wonder how to gain more efficiency from an already super easy to use disk subsystem? Scripting is the key; of course! IBM makes it easy by releasing a ready to use package via IBM alphaWorks which uses Perl under the covers. Best of all the alphaWorks tool is FREE http://tinyurl.com/24zmdpv Happy Efficiency gains!

We have referenced NLSAS quite a bit in the past few weeks and felt it was time to get into the nuts and bolts of what NLSAS is exactly. A SATA drive has only one port so in the event of a network failure the SATA drive is not reachable. To add a level of HA to the SATA environment interposers are utilized to add a second connectivity port while allowing conversion to another interface (i.e. Fibre Channel). Switching the... [Continue Reading]

Earlier this week I was stunned to see China took #1 & #3 spots at the 2H2010 supercomputing event. Trying not to be dismayed I wondered how US companies would respond? Did I question our abilities? Certainly not, however, 2.36PF is order and magnitude larger than #2 slot. A short time ago I saw that some students have built their own supercomputer which placed 3rd in the NCSA Green 500. So my optimisium for the US future... [Continue Reading]

PCI-SIG released the latest PCIe Base 3.0 specification. The new PCIe 3.0 architecture is a low-cost, high-performance I/O technology that includes a new 128b/130b encoding scheme and a data rate of 8 gigatransfers per second (GT/s), doubling the interconnect bandwidth over the PCIe 2.0 specification. PCIe 3.0 technology also maintains backward compatibility with previous PCIe architectures and provides the optimum design point for... [Continue Reading]

As the IT industry continues to push commoditization across the enterprise, its next target appears to be the Ethernet switching realm. How so you ask? Network Convergence and the newest CNA offering from QLogic is the 3GCNA a valiant effort into full commoditization of Ethernet switches. 3GCNA’s provide support for multi-protocol (iSCSI, FCoE) and QLogic’s newest 3GCNA allows VM’s to switch protocols on the fly. Can you leverage this... [Continue Reading]

IBM’s new mid-range Scalable Storage Storwize V7000 was designed from the ground up offering ease of use for product install, Admin & Maintenance. Take notice the product is new, however, the code set it runs on is stable it is based on IBM’s SVC which is > than 6.5 years young. The subsystem also brings enterprise caliber technology into the mid-range market. Such as, Disk Virtualization (based on SVC technology) RAID... [Continue Reading]

Most sizable, if not all enterprises have already invested in a Data Warehouse (of some order and magnitude). Not only is it a business best practice, but it helps to uncover new business opportunities if used properly. I wonder how many enterprises that have invested in a Data Warehouse are getting ROI from that Data Warehouse? I ask since, the Business Intelligence (BI) market seems to be growing faster than any other segment in... [Continue Reading]

Wonder what IOP value you utilized for planning your VDI thin client environment? Was it 4 IOPS,Was it 8 IOPS, Was it 12 IOPS / thin client? How many IOPS are you driving in your environment? Is the VMware standard of 20 IOPS / thin client your norm or the exception?

The IBM Storwize V7000 SPC-1 benchmark (OLTP-style workload) for IBM Storwize V7000 is now available at http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1/#spc1 Review the executive summary at http://www.storageperformance.org/benchmark_results_files/SPC-1/IBM/A00097_IBM_Storwize-V7000/a00097_IBM_Storwize-V7000_2-node_SPC1_executive-summary.pdf SPC benchmark system info: This measurement is of an IBM Storwize V7000 system... [Continue Reading]

I seem to be stuck in the clouds lately, I am serious I have spent a great deal of time thinking about Cloud Computing. For instance, with the in-depth push into virtualization across all layers in the Data Center (Storage, Networking, Servers etc….) I have gotten hung up on, at what point in the virtualization process does an enterprise cross over from a virtualized Data Center to having a Private Cloud? Do we have metrics to let us know... [Continue Reading]

Today IBM took the covers off a revolutionary way to not only deploy but to run mid-range storage. The new offering is called IBM Storwize V7000 Some of the features: Utilizes automatic solid-state storage optimization with IBM Easy Tier Nearline SAS drives (NLSAS), Fantastic user friendly GUI Read more about it here: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/news/center/storwize_v7000/index.html

Secure Disk Wiping a.k.a. Disk Erasure has been around for a good while in terms of IT life cycles. Wondering how pervasive you utilize it in your Enterprise environment? It is well understood that most IT breaches occur after data has left the premises (DLP) Some well known options available: shred -vfz -n 100/deve/hda or dd=if/deve/zero then run a pass w/ ones etc... or dd /dev/random (perhaps several times) or degausser Or Does your... [Continue Reading]

Solid State Drives (SSD) We all are aware of the hundreds of articles at blogs raving about how the performance in / around SSD is going to transform the storage industry. I am not going down that rabbit hole; I am however, going to present another angle all together. Have you considered how many SSD’s your disk subsystem can support without bringing it (disk subsystem) to its virtual knee’s? You must... [Continue Reading]

What does it take for a successful VDI implementation? Let’s think about a few integral steps in getting your VDI project from the whiteboard into production (we don’t have enough space to cover all aspects such as project management, change management, Thin Client selection, etc.) VDI aka Virtual Desktop Infrastructure relies on your disk subsystem being a stable foundation in which you can build and grow your VDI environment. ... [Continue Reading]

Wondering how many enterprises have made the switch to IPv6? Are you willing to share some of your 'gotchas'? Also wondering how many have migrated over to DNSSEC? Are you willing to share some of your 'gotchas'?

Today's enterprise edge is evolving not just at the NIU, broadband entry but, at the mobile backhaul too. So, your network core needs to be able to handle the faster bandwidths but also the transition technologies for instance are you ready for low jitter SONET? How are you planning on making the transition in your data center?

Flexible storage The new data everywhere enterprise is about flexibility, which enables task savings freeing up resources to focus other critical enterprise events such as Risk, Security & Compliance. What type of disk subsystem are we referring to that is flexible allow one to accomplish more? Are you wondering how can it impact your enterprise?

Everyone in IT is familiar w/ the 80 / 20 “rule”. For networking it used for be 80% of traffic would remain local and then 20% would / could go offsite. Then the Internet Age came about and flipped that paradigm. The data everywhere revolution is flipping the data storage model from an 80 / 20 rule. Where 80% WAS structured data and 20% was unstructured data. In the past few years, the rule has been creeping toward an equilibrium and... [Continue Reading]

A flexible infrastructure is paramount in the new data center which enables an enterprise to quickly adapt to the changing course of the enterprise and technology while working within the realm of shrinking IT budgets. From a networking perspective an enabler of flexibility is based around the recent 40 & 100GB (802.3ba) Ethernet ratification. This advancement is very important for the new data center not just from a speeds and feeds... [Continue Reading]

In response to: Data Center 7.0 & Storage I am surprised that nobody questioned the business model I referenced; questioning its validity? I believe it is NOT valid, as business is constantly adapting to the new trends and directions (successful enterprises are not rigid). I believe, in order for the new flexible business model to be followed the IT organization must be more flexible. Another component is that IT leaders need to push further... [Continue Reading]

Data Center 7.0 How has your enterprise been exploiting the ‘recession’ to push forward with new technology upgrades? Isn’t that what we were taught to do in Econ. 201 & 202 (recall the businesses that invested the most during times of economic downturn were the one’s taking the greatest strides as the recovery came around and hence the most market share. Think about your current data center was it built prior to... [Continue Reading]